The integrity of the public switched telephone network and related network based facilities is an issue of increasing concern to the public at large and to the telecommunications industry—particularly in the wake of recent network failures occurring in the United States, such as the fire that occurred at a local exchange in Chicago in May 1998 which caused the loss of telecommunications services to over 35,000 residential telephone, 37,000 trunks, and over 118,000 long-distance fiber optic circuits. Concern over network integrity has also been heightened by the ever increasing costs associated with the replacement of telecommunications equipment and the labor-intensive costs of deploying a repair and restoration work force to an affected site. Accordingly, telecommunication services providers are becoming more attentive to assessing and developing new ways to minimize service outages by preventing damage to existing facilities, finding alternative means of routing traffic and expediting the repair and restoration process.
Telecommunication services providers such as AT&T and other local and long-distance carriers maintain an extensive network of copper-based, coaxial, and fiber optic cables to carry the nation's telecommunications traffic. Despite the care given to protect and maintain these cables, such cables can and do sustain damage. These cables are damaged for a number of reasons, ranging from acts of nature, in the form of floods, fires and earthquakes, to contractor mistake or carelessness in severing cables during excavation. Regardless of the cause of the damage, service disruption can have an immediate and lasting effect on the businesses that depend upon such services. Moreover, a service disruption may also have significant financial consequences on the service providers. More specifically, service providers face the prospect of significant loss of revenue as well as and perhaps most importantly, a loss of goodwill in its ability to provide and maintain quality, reliable and survivable services. To minimize such financial and perceptual damage to the service providers, a rapid and reliable restoration plan and process must be in place.
Present-day outside plant cables are monitored by various systems that are capable of detecting the disruption of traffic on a cable-by-cable basis. Upon detection of a broken or damaged cable, a dispatcher will dispatch one or more field technicians to the location of the break to perform a preliminary assessment of the site and to conduct the necessary repairs. However, the mere detection of a break in a cable or the fixation of the location of the break on a cable is often insufficient to assess the magnitude and degree of effort necessary to restore service. Often, cables are buried or hidden from view by natural and made—made structures such as trees, poles, apartment buildings, sewer ducts, bridges and roadside guardrails and passageways.
To facilitate a damage assessment and the extent of the repair effort necessary, the dispatcher must first assemble a team of field inspectors to assess the extent of the damage and potential obstacles in the way of repair and restoration. This first stage of assessment is rather inefficient in that it relies heavily on the assessment of cable damage by field personnel that may not have the best vantage point from which to assess the damage. Often, field personnel are only provided with a location and an identified cable or cables and related equipment that have been detected as the source of the problem. Under these circumstances, field personnel are often unable to fully appreciate the routing of damaged cables, the location of related equipment that must be replaced or tested, and the alternative solutions to the problem. Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system which would inform the dispatcher and the assigned field personnel of the terrain, cable routing, and related equipment associated with or within the immediate vicinity of the damaged cables or equipment. In particular, there is a need for the provisioning of structural and up-to-date mapping information about the routing of the affected cables and related equipment. Moreover, the mapping and display information is necessary to facilitate the advanced assessment of the potential damage and the effort necessary to repair and restore service.